Family of Afghan army colonel killed in US raid

An Afghan army colonel whose wife and children died in a US-led raid demanded action against the troops responsible on Friday, as Afghan as President Hamid Karzai condemned the killings.

The operation in the eastern province of Khost around midnight on Wednesday killed the wife of Afghan National Army artillery commander Awal Khan, two of his children and a brother.

The troops, who had been hunting a militant linked to radical Islamist groups, also shot a pregnant woman and killed her unborn baby, which had almost come to term, Khan and a provincial health official said. The woman survived the shooting.

The mounting civilian death toll from military operations is one of the main sources of tension between Afghan authorities and the US and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

“The [international] coalition has to stop this cruelty and brutal action,” a grieving Khan said in the village of Ali Daya, a few kilometers south of Khost.

Khan said he was flown home from his base in the eastern province of Ghazni in a military helicopter on Thursday after being told of the deaths.

“I want the coalition leaders to expose those behind this and punish them,” Khan said, adding that the government should resign if it could not protect its people.

Khan lost his schoolteacher wife, a 17-year-old daughter named Nadia, a 15-year-old son, Aimal, and his brother, who worked for a government department. Another daughter was wounded.

After the shooting, the pregnant wife of Khan’s cousin, who lived next door, went outside her home and was shot five times in the abdomen, the army officer said.

She was taken to Khost provincial hospital, where the nine-month-old fetus was removed, he said.

Police said troops stood on the roofs of houses surrounding that of a militant suspect and appeared to be intruders to neighboring residents, who came out with weapons and opened fire.

The US-led military initially said four people killed by troops were “armed militants.”

But a statement on Thursday said investigations “suggest that the people killed and wounded were not enemy combatants as previously reported.”

US military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian said on Friday it had become clear that the four were not associated with the targeted militant, who was arrested.

“It was an unfortunate set of circumstances where they may have thought they were being robbed or attacked and came out, and the forces may have thought they were associated with the targeted individual,” he said.